DIY environmental engineering

"Social Buzz": the number of times this article has been shared across major social media networks

It’s amazing how personal PCs are these days. On booting up they can greet you with a personalised message (“Hello Dave, would you like to hear a song?”) they can play your favourite music while you work, and they can show you inspirational images between jobs.

But the sad thing is in most cases…they don’t. Look around the average office, and you’ll see most computers are just set to “default”. Most people work in stony silence, with an anonymous medium-grey screen as their desktop.

Now, humans are creatures of our environment – if you make our surroundings drab, then soon enough we’ll reflect that dullness in our demeanour. And we’re social creatures too, so when we’re surrounded by dull people we tend to take on a morose mood ourselves. In the end you have a downward spiral of ever crankier co-workers – I’m sure that’s how wars start!

So, in the interests of making the world a better place, I think we should – nay, we have a duty – to make our environment as beautiful as possible. Outside that means being a good eco-citizen and treading lightly on the earth, inside it means getting rid of default computer desktops.

Put a photo of your mum on there, scan one of your kids’ drawings, do a Google images search (while obeying all applicable intellectual property laws of course) or if you that doesn’t work for you, use one of the Active NZ ones here. The world will thank you for it!